Panorama!

While going to the stores at 5 o'clock in the morning on Black Friday (the day after Thanksgiving, for those who might not know the term - it's presumably the busiest shopping day of the year), I bought a new digital camera. My old one was just that - old. It's a 3.3 megapixel Sony Cyber Shot, which came with a 4 megabyte memory stick. I had to buy more memory sticks for it, the largest being 32 megabytes, and believe me, those sticks don't hold a lot of information. Any movie I wanted to take was limited to 15 seconds. Plus the camera is very large and clunky compared to newer models, and navigating the menus has always been frustrating.

The one I bought last month is a 10 megapixel Nikon S550. That's the camera I used for the Cabo pictures, and I'm quite happy with it. And the camera, along with a 4 gigabyte memory card and a carrying case, cost a fraction of what I paid for the Sony. Imagine: 4 gigabytes of information on a little card. I can take many high resolution pictures and a lot of movies with that kind of memory. Even though we left for Cabo the day after I bought the camera, I wish I had taken the time to read the instruction manual. This camera can do a lot.

One of the features is called "Panorama Assist." It helps you line up a series of shots which you can then stitch together on your computer. It's incredibly easy to use. I took the camera to work a few days ago and took a series of 9 pictures. Here is the panoramic view from the garage of the Columbia Gas building:



I tried stitching some of the Cabo pictures together, but it simply doesn't work unless all the pictures are taken from the same spot. And as many pictures as I took down there, very few were taken from a single spot. But I've learned. I'll keep the panorama function in mind when traveling, starting with our upcoming trip to Cocoa Beach.